Editor, Times-Union: Our child bike riders often behave as though they were trying to get run over. Our first-year drivers wrap themselves around trees and other vehicles distressingly often. Our adult drivers tend to aim for the spot where a cyclist will be when the car gets there.
The first problem is simple, if expensive, to deal with: Take the kids out on their bikes and teach them the rules of the road. One lesson per week for six weeks should do it – if the physical-education classes are arranged back-to-back with health or a study hall, they could be taken out four or five at a time without disrupting their other studies.
Having taken care of the first problem, you get improvements in the other two free: If you teach children the rules of the road when they are 12, and do it again at 13 and 14 and 15, when they are 16, they will already be able to get through a four-way stop without reciting the rules to themselves, and can concentrate on learning how to handle a car.
And after four years of on-the-road mindful experience, our adult drivers will have a spine-deep understanding of the way bicycles move.
